


A single bullet

by elenatria



Series: Valoris [1]
Category: Chernobyl (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Blackmail, Charkov's pov, Closure, Duty, Emotional Manipulation, Love Confession, M/M, RPF, Tragic Love, Valoris, real person fiction - Freeform, valery legasov's tapes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-05-19 04:34:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19349599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elenatria/pseuds/elenatria
Summary: KGB chairman Charkov leaves the courtroom after sentencing Valery Legasov to living death.But there's one more thing he must take care of.One more man.





	1. Viktor Charkov

Chairman Charkov wasn’t there when the former First Deputy Director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy was sent off to his living grave in a stern KGB vehicle, grim as a coffin and suitably black. Instead he waited for his ride at the back of the Hall of Culture where the trial took place. 

He glanced back at the young soldier who was accompanying him with his weapon in hand, motionless as a statue. He felt relieved. Proud. This ridiculous charade was over. He was a public official and was expected to attend Party meetings, May Day parades, trials, but if it was up to him he would avoid all that unnecessary exposure just as his hard-earned status had ridden him of supervising arrests and torture. He had witnessed too many shock therapies in his youth, too many waterboarding sessions, too many beatings. He was tired. 

He knew the Party wasn’t done with him just as he knew he had so much more to give to the Party. But the Chernobyl affair had drained him. Never in his life had he felt his country’s reputation weighing so heavily on his shoulders. They all depended on him. The wives, the elderly, the children, they were all his responsibility. How could he fail them? How could he let those entitled and self-righteous imperialists with their prying satellites humiliate them? The self-sacrificing workers, the very soil he walked on, they were all his to protect.

_Vain?_

Maybe. He was a soldier who acknowledged his flaws but no man can achieve anything without the smallest portion of vanity. Maybe that was his only sin, the thought that he was doing his job more efficiently than the others; that he was better than the others. But he  _was._ And the proof of his efficiency was being sent back to his miserable little apartment in Moscow, never to be seen, never to be heard of again.

Vain?

Absolutely. But at least he wasn’t a traitor.

There would be heroes and there would be villains and there would be May Day parades for years to come and red flags everywhere but there would be no martyrs, and no traitors. Not if he had any say in the matter.

His thoughts were dissolved by the muffled coughing behind him, the rustling of heavy footsteps dragging through the barren radioactive dust.

 _She_ was gone but _he_ wasn’t. He was still here.

That impossible Ukrainian sod.

He turned on his heels effortlessly, his glittering weasel eyes blinking behind thick expressionless glasses.

“Comrade Shcherbina!” he exclaimed through wolfish teeth, his smile colder than the pebbles crushed underneath his polished shoes.

The Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers and head of the Bureau for Fuel and Energy halted in front of him, gaze dark with despair, breath caught by something worse than walking in large hasty steps to catch up with him. Something _stronger._

And then, those eyes; the steely eyes of a lion searching for his lost cub.

“What are you going to do with him?”

No evasions, no allusions, just a simple sentence and underneath a world of agony, like boiling lava; restless and unforgiving.

Charkov felt a twinge of satisfaction uncoiling in his gut. _“Him?”_

“Legasov, professor Legasov,” Boris growled urgently, “what are you going to do with him? Where are you taking him?”

“Taking him?” Charkov huffed with an inconspicuous smile. “To his apartment in Moscow of course. What did you think? After all he’s been through I do believe the man deserves a ride back home. It’s the least we could do.”

Boris gnashed his teeth as he made a motion towards him, his bulk towering over Charkov like an unspoken threat, ominous enough to make the soldier accompanying the chairman clutch his weapon and take a warning step forward. Charkov waved him off briskly.

“You kept him down there after the trial,” Boris insisted. “In the kitchen. What did you do to him?”

 _“Do?_   I assure you nothing at all,” Charkov shrugged.

Boris took one more step towards him, careful not to alarm the soldier and end up with a gun in his face, as his nails dug deep into his fists.

“Do you imagine yourself a decent person?”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you imagine yourself an apostle, a crusader, a man on a holy mission?” Boris snarled. “Is that what you think you are?”

“Comrade Shcherbina, I assure you I have no idea what you’re talking a-”

 _“ANSWER ME!”_ Boris roared, his thick fingers clenching and unclenching on his sides as if yearning to strangle more than air.

Charkov crossed his hands and balanced on his heels like a teacher in class. He was amused.

“An apostle? A holy mission? No,” he gave a condescending smile. “I’m not religious, comrade. Crusaders bit off more than they could chew and I assure you I know exactly where I’m standing and how far I can go. But if you’re asking if I did the right thing-”

“I’m asking what you _did_ to him,” Boris scowled. “And you’re not answering my question. I’m asking what happened in the kitchen and why Val… Why _Legasov_ was sent off without a word, why the soldiers didn’t let us get close to him, talk to him-”

 _“And bid him farewell?”_ Charkov cut him off with a knowing nonchalant nod.

He grinned triumphantly at Boris’ hitched breath.

He knew. He knew everything.

The fearless broad-shouldered minister, the fierce and powerful politician lost all his nerve when he was finally confronted with the bitter truth; his ally was gone. His friend would be erased from history books and there was nothing he could do about it.

“You really liked him, didn’t you?” Charkov gloated walking half a circle around him like a hyena waiting to attack its wounded prey. “You must have bonded, the two of you, all those endless nights trying to avert Armageddon, like comrades in arms clinging to each other for hope.” He clicked his tongue in mockery. “Very touching.”

Boris’ eyes turned an icy shade of blue as his lips went thin and pale like a sheet of paper.

Charkov’s grin grew wider wrinkling his aged face until it reached the corners of his sparkling eyes.

“Do not fret, I did not hurt him,” he whispered in a cruel casual tone. “Not physically anyway. He’ll live for the rest of his days – what’s left of them anyway – in the safety of his little apartment. He’ll go to work regularly. He’ll buy his newspaper. He’ll eat his dinner out of cans with tomato soup. We spared him because you see...” Charkov gestured at the soldier’s weapon, “there are things worse than death.”

“What do you mean?” Boris hissed, the deadlike paleness of his lips spreading all over his worn face.

Charkov shook his head as he sank his hands into his pockets. “No need to go into details now, do we?” was his cryptic reply. “You’ll find out yourself when he won’t be answering your phone calls because he knows that the Deputy Chairman Shcherbina could accidentally trip and fall off the stairs of his own house or die in his sleep. Why would he risk talking to you when your life depends on his silence? I’m sure you know him better than I do. His… feelings I mean.”

Boris’ eyes were welling up with hate. Still, not one tear rolled down his cheek.

 _Pity_.

Charkov had cherished those fragile little beads in his youth when men and women, stripped of all hope and decency, were begging on their knees for a single bullet.

Charkov had no bullets anymore. Just open prisons for traitors like Legasov and oceans of despair for those who loved him. 

He patted Boris’ arm like a father comforting his son after a good beating.

“If anything, you can find consolation in the reason behind his silence,” he reassured him. “He wouldn’t answer your phone calls if his life depended on it. That’s how much he loves you _, comrade Shcherbina.”_

Boris’ mouth slacked open but not a word fell from his lips. Charkov was drinking in his hate and despair like a bee sucking honey. He would drain him if he could in more ways than one but he decided he had enough satisfaction for one day. The world wasn’t a perfect place but at least two of the enemies of the state were defeated.

 _His_ enemies.

“He loves you,” he stated coldly. “That’s why you’ll never see him again.”

Boris blinked away the tears and pursed his lips as if to smother a sob.

Charkov couldn’t help but smile seeing how overwhelmed he was. How utterly alone.

Valery Legasov’s best friend, his _only_ friend, found no solace in those words; he turned quickly on his heel and left.

Charkov gazed at the imposing figure as it disappeared into the building and wondered if he would have felt bad in another universe, in another life. Probably not. He never questioned his own methods and he wouldn’t do it now, just a few years before retirement. Because he _was_ going to retire, he was going to leave it all behind.

Except his beliefs.

There was love and there was duty and there was that little space in-between that whispered to him there was a way to have everything without sacrificing one for the other, but he quickly stifled that voice. Shcherbina had made his choice and so had he.

To him there was nothing stronger than duty.

Not even love.


	2. The tape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I should have… I should have taken my chances,” Boris shook his head, his voice trembling from the cold and despair. “I should have visited him. Just once. What would they do? Kill me? I’m already dead. He was already dead. They made sure of that."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should be posting this as a separate story because lord knows I, for one, get discouraged when I see stories with too many words. So maybe I'm condemning this piece to obscurity. .__.  
> But the Charkov piece was full of despair and it needed its catharsis.  
> So now we have Boris' POV, and one more chapter left to conclude this ride into angst, hope and despair. Bear with me.

The ducks of the Moskva River had a stroke of luck that cold November morning. They discovered a part of the stream that hadn’t been sealed the previous night by the thick layer of frost, a round opening in the ice near the bank big enough to accommodate a dozen of them. Every now and then they would plunge their beaks under the surface to grab silver slippery fish for breakfast. Soon, as the pale autumn sun rose above the Moscow rooftops, the feathered refugees were additionally blessed with a shower of crumbs.

Similar to stray dogs chewing on leftovers, the ducks didn’t question the origin of their unexpected meal. To them it was as if the gray-haired man in the ushanka hat and black overcoat, throwing crumbs from his sushki rings, had been standing there forever – not unlike the statues of Gorky Park; still, he was deprived of the otherworldly air of their bronze immortality. Something in his posture, the resigned way he was slouching over the railing, betrayed he was just a man.

The person once known as the Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers rubbed his gloved hands over the fence to get rid of the remaining crumbs. His worn blue eyes, fixed on the shore beneath him like nails on the floor, rose only at the sound of muffled footsteps on the snow. A scrawny balding figure with small piercing eyes approached him in his fur hat with a heavy wooden carrier in hand. Every now and then a soft mewling sound would come out of the holes on the roof; as the silver-haired man peered at the box, a pair of green eyes sparkled back at him through the wires.

“Volodya,” the former politician rose his hand, a twitch of friendly acknowledgment blooming on lips that had forgotten how to smile.

“Boris Evdokimovich,” the figure greeted back leaving the carrier on the ground and opened his arms.

Boris Evdokimovich Shcherbina welcomed his old friend with a hug and several pats on the back before pulling back to inspect him. “You look better than I ever was,” he said warmly.

The journalist furrowed his brow, struck by Boris’ paleness. “How bad is it?”

“Getting worse every day…” Boris replied with a dry cough as he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket.

Vladimir Gubarev’s eyes went dark. “I’m really sorry, I’m-”

“Sorry for what?” Boris cut him off wiping his mouth. “It’s not your fault if I got sick and you didn’t. Besides you were there only for a week. No one blames you for that.”

“No, I’m sorry, it’s just that…” Gubarev muttered. “First Valery, now you. I’m running out of people to whine about Chernobyl with,” he shrugged in an almost casual tone, “and my wife is so sick of hearing my war stories.”

Boris chuckled discreetly knowing that if his laughter got too loud he would end up having yet another coughing fit. He sat heavily on the bench behind them and gestured over the empty space beside him.

“Do you think you were being followed?” he inquired.

“I doubt it,” Gubarev reassured him sitting down. “On a cold morning like this? After so many months? It would surprise me if they remembered our names at all. Besides Valery’s dead. Nobody cares anymore.”

“You’re right…” Boris nodded, his empty eyes chasing a black-headed gull soaring over the ice. “Nobody cares anymore…”

He unfolded the used handkerchief in his palm and stared numbly at the ominous crimson stains. The silence between them was so thick that for a moment Boris forgot he was the one who had called Vladimir Gubarev, the science editor of Pravda, to meet under the cold and unsuspecting Moscow sky. Away from bugs, away from curious onlookers, away from spies.

That moment he thought he might as well be dead, forgotten, lying at the bottom of the frozen river, waiting for his body to be discovered days after his demise.

_Just like Valery._

He blinked away the painful thought and forced himself to smile. “What’s her name?” he bended over the wooden box as he slipped the tip of his finger through the wires.

“Inga,” Gubarev smiled watching the tabby feline pawing at Boris’ leather glove. “His mother’s name. He never had a daughter so…”

Boris realized his face had instantly morphed into a dreadful mask as the journalist froze before finishing his sentence. It wasn’t just the paleness and the black circles under his eyes, the constant reminders of his Chernobyl heart. It must have been something crueler, something boiling in his chest, squirming under the surface of his fragile calmness, threatening to explode.

“I never-” he stuttered blinking at the cold autumn air. He sat back on his seat. “I never got the chance to ask him about his… about his fa- about his… f-family _,_ oh _God…”_

He covered his eyes and dug his nails deep into his wrinkled forehead _._

“Boris…” Gubarev choked giving his shoulder a feeble squeeze.

Beads of tears formed tiny icicles on Boris’ cheeks and all of a sudden he was being sucked into a hole of nothingness. The sickness hadn’t managed to break him. But this…

This was worse.

“There was nothing you could do,” Gubarev insisted. “They wouldn’t let you. It’s not your fault.”

“I should have… I should have taken my chances,” Boris shook his head, his voice trembling from the cold and despair. “I should have visited him. Just once. What would they do? Kill me? I’m already dead. _He_ was already dead. They made sure of that. Their negligence and stinginess and their pride and...”

Gubarev drew back his hand and shoved his palms into the pockets of his long coat, looking for something. He turned to gaze at Boris but the former politician was unable to return the look. Instead he took a deep shaky breath and rested his elbows on his knees. A broken old man.

“I was asking everyone I knew about him,” Boris confessed, his voice raspy and dark with guilt. “Trying to catch any news I could, on his welfare, his condition. How he was getting along. I can’t imagine the bitterness he felt finding out he was the only member of his team at Chernobyl who was not named a hero of socialist labour. Imagine how humiliated he felt, how betrayed.”

“They gave him a watch instead of a medal, can you believe it?” Gubarev scoffed and the cold air turned his breath into steam. “It would have been less painful had they stripped and beaten him. He was excluded by his own people from a seat on the council of the Kurchatov Institute. Do you know what they said, Boris?” he spat hatefully. “Do you? ‘We will not be supervised by a _boy.’”_

Boris turned to glare at him as if he had those prestigious scientists right in front of him. Within his reach. Within his murderous grasp.

Gubarev clenched his fist against his trembling lips, stopping himself from cursing. “I wanted to punch them in the face, Boris, I swear to God. I wanted to tell them ‘Legasov never left Chernobyl but I didn’t see any of _you_ there. Where were you when he was putting his life at risk? Where the _fuck_ were you?’”

Boris rested his forehead on his entwined fingers. His bent pleading posture could be easily mistaken for a man in prayer had religion not been uprooted in his childhood, when the bud was still young. “God” was nothing more than a manner of speech to born and bred atheists like him. God didn’t exist. Not when people like Valery were punished for the good they did. Not when the best of humanity withered and died while parasites, bootlickers and backstabbers roamed the earth.

There _was_ no “God” _._ How could he possibly exist.

“All I wanted was to hear his voice…” he murmured taking a deep laboured breath, his eyes glued on the ground. “I would go to public phones, each time on a different street, and call him. Strangely enough the KGB never forced him to change his number – that’s how arrogant they were, how confident that I would never reach out to him.”

“Did you talk?”

Boris chuckled, his head hanging over his clenched knuckles. “No,” he said firmly. “Of course not. I knew his phone was tapped. I knew they’d make his life a living hell if they heard my voice. It’s not like I cared about my own life. But _he_ did. And I knew they’d tell him if something happened to me.” He tipped his head just enough to watch the seagull take a dive. “I-I wanted to spare him the pain, Volodya. They’d mail him my head in a box if they could. He had no reason to suffer any more than he already did.”

When the journalist considered his friend’s tired face there were no traces of tears, no tiny shards of ice on his cheeks anymore. Just a steely blue stare cutting through the cold November air like a dagger.

“I would call him just to be able to listen to him saying ‘Hello’, you know?” Boris continued, the words falling from his mouth like dead December leaves. “His voice, that's all I needed…” He closed his eyes. “Just one word, one word was enough. Of course I would never answer but he knew it was me, I could tell from the hitching of his breath. We would share the silence, the long pauses between unspoken words. And that was enough. Sometimes I swear I could almost hear his silent sobs, his shaky breathing – but I knew he was alright, and he knew I was alive. It was enough, Volodya, God knows it was enough...”

With trembling hands Gubarev drew a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, put one in his mouth and offered Boris the rest. Boris refused with a weary wave. The journalist struck his lighter and curved his fingers around the flame taking sharp inhales.

“So he never talked?” he demanded squeezing his lips around the cigarette. “He never said anything? To you?”

Boris turned to face him, his eyes lit with surprise.

_Did Vladimir know?_

After all, among those who had been at Chernobyl he was the only one who was allowed to talk to Valery after the trial.

_He must know everything._

Vladimir Gubarev was a brave persistent soul. He had convinced Yakovlev, Gorbachev’s own adviser, to let journalists witness the scene. He had called him every day until Yakovlev authorized a group of journalists to go to Chernobyl, including Vladimir.

So, _did_ he know?

 _Better leave that questioned unanswered_ , Boris pondered.

“No…” he said eventually in a broken voice that was doing nothing to conceal his turmoil. “He never spoke. Not one word.”

_A lie._

Gubarev took a few puffs from his smoke before Boris could gather the courage to ask him the burning question that had been tormenting him all those months since Valery died.

“When did you last speak to him?”

Gubarev took a long pause biting his lip as he dug into the snow with the tip of his boot. “The day before he died. I paid him one last visit but I didn’t know. I couldn’t have guessed what he was about to do.”

“What was the last thing he told you?”

The journalist regarded Boris with a pained expression. _“’Take care of Inga.’_ He swallowed hard. “I said ‘Why? Are you afraid for your life? Are they threatening you?’ His response was that he was sick, that he didn’t have long to live. I couldn’t possibly imagine that he would take his own life only hours after I left him. Had I known I would have never left, Boris, I-”

Boris turned to face the river pursing his stiff lips. This time he was determined to not let tears make him look like a helpless schoolboy. “It’s alright,” he whispered, “he was bound to do it. He chose the day to do it. Nothing you could have done about it.”

Gubarev nodded slowly letting out the smoke in big puffs that formed a thick mist around his head. The sun was starting to make the frosty atmosphere bearable, encouraging a few scattered people in beanies and mittens to take a walk along the waterfront.

“There’s one thing I never asked you,” Boris broke the silence. “How you got Valery’s tapes. I thought they would have confiscated them along with anything of importance found in his apartment.”

“Oh they did,” Gubarev smirked, the first genuine smile since they started talking about Legasov. “The committee members took them as soon as they got to his apartment. But I knew of their existence, Valery had told me. I had encouraged him to keep a record of what had happened at Chernobyl. He wanted to write it all down but he was sick, he didn’t have the time… So he recorded everything.”

Gubarev squished the butt on the bench and drew another smoke from the pack. His hand hovered idly near his mouth with the unlit cigarette sitting still between his fingers, as if, like Boris, it was anticipating the conclusion of the story with bated breath.

 “At Valery’s funeral I approached Ligachev, the secretary of the central committee, and told him to give me the tapes or I would go to the Politburo,” Gubarev bragged. “I said ‘The tapes are not meant for you, they’re not meant for Shcherbina. They’re meant for me’. And you know it worked, that same evening they brought the tapes to my office! They even had an inscription that left no room for doubt – _‘Volodya Gubarev’_.” He paused, knitting his brow at the memory. “After two days I printed a huge piece in Pravda. Those fuckers did their best to erase him from history books. Rip off his pages, throw them into the fire. But there was nothing they could do about the _tapes._ The tapes are mine.”

Boris threw him a side glance. His lips parted unsure of how to continue, unsure of how to utter the next sentence without making him sound like a complete selfish idiot, unsure of how to accept the bitter truth that hid in Vladimir’s words.

“Did he…” he began as a shade of pink took over the sickly paleness of his cheeks. “Did he leave anything behind?... For me?”

Gubarev gave an amused chuckle and straightened the fur hat on his head as if trying to hide his laughter. He rested his elbows on his knees and turned to Boris whose blushing did nothing to hide his embarrassment.

The journalist’s grin broadened. “Yeah. He did. There must have been a tape for you, he hinted at it in one of his recordings. He didn’t want the KGB to know of course. But he said he had hidden something for you in the kitchen, ‘B’s gift’ he called it. And oh, you’re going to need this too.”

He shoved his hand into his pocket and brought out a key. “From his apartment.”

Boris’ eyes widened at the unexpected present. “His apartment? How could you have a key? I thought the police took it all.”

“Well they didn’t know I had one, did they?” Gubarev’s lip twisted in a triumphant grin. “He gave it to me the night before his death. He wanted me to have those tapes, Boris, and he wanted me to save Inga. I never got there on time of course, I never called him until it was too late. When I found out, the police had taken everything. Lucky for me, Inga had already been rescued by the neighbours.”

“How so?”

“She was the one who notified everyone about his death. Valery had left her several bowls of food but when she finished it all she climbed up the kitchen window overlooking the freight lift and howled her lungs out. Mr Sokolov next door broke the glass and took her in, and that’s how they found out Valery was dead. Then they called the police.”

Gubarev shrugged. “It’s not like the KGB would care about a broken window, or Legasov’s missing cat for that matter. Mr Sokolov knew who I was so he trusted me with Inga when I arrived looking for the tapes.”

He handed Boris the key. “Valery wanted me to have the tapes but I can’t keep Inga any longer, the wife…” he winced reluctantly. “She wants a dog,” he muttered through his teeth.

He lifted the carrier and placed it between them. “She’s yours. I’m sure that’s what he wanted, she’s his kid, you see. Just… take care of her. Alright?”

Boris gazed numbly at the glistening piece of nickel in his palm before shifting his eyes at the wooden carrier. _She must have been freezing in that box all this time_ , he reckoned with a hint of regret.

He took a deep breath; he never thought he'd find a reason again to wake up in the mornings. One last treasure to find and someone to take care of.

A reason to get on his feet and back into motion. Back to life, for as long as he had.

Something dawned in him, something warming him from the inside, more radiant than a thousand suns.

He clenched the key against his chest giving Vladimir a ghost of a smile as he took the wooden box, feeling its weight against his thigh.

The warmth was still there, pulsing in his heart like the last rays of sunshine on a glorious sunset. He knew what it was now and he embraced it like a long-lost friend.

It was hope.


	3. Inga

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “This tape belongs to Boris Evdokimovich Shcherbina,” the voice began in an almost formal tone. “I don’t know if he will be Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers by the time it reaches him. I don’t even know if he’ll live long enough to receive it. But there it is… Months of silence condensed into a single tape.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wish writing didn't take up days and days of my time. I wish I could write more. I'm envious of people who write more. I'm envious of people who write quicker, better.  
> I wish I were more consistent in this fandom, any fandom.  
> I wish.
> 
> This chapter's inspiration is one part Stellan Skarsgard's "River", one part Rewind's last message to Chromedome in "More Than Meets The Eye", and one part "Blade Runner".

_Here._

_Here and now._

Boris squeezed one last time the jagged piece of metal that was getting slippery with sweat between his thumb and index finger. As if waking from a trance he shifted his eyes from one end of the half-lit corridor to the other like a burglar weighing his chances; he had been standing motionless in front of that door for a good five minutes.

_Too long._

_Inga is waiting._

Taking a sharp breath in he wondered if there was a point in carrying on with his plan.

Gubarev said “there _must_ have been a tape for you”. Not “there is”. Valery had “hinted at it” but what did that even mean? What did Valery say? He should have asked Vladimir his exact words but it was too late now, the journalist was long gone and Inga was probably freezing, mewing her lungs out in his trunk. He shouldn’t leave her waiting, he pondered, locked in the car just because he was too eager to find Valery’s gift on that same day. She was only a cat.

Another gulp of air, another squeeze of the key. He clutched his eyes shut.

What if it’s not there? What if the police, the KGB found it already? What if they heard Gubarev’s tapes and solved the riddle before me?

What if I’m here to waste the next three hours of my life, whatever life is left of me, searching for something that doesn’t exist? Something I wasn’t bound to find?

“B’s gift.”

What did that even mean?

It meant nothing, they never exchanged gifts when Valery was alive, when they still had time.

Time - the one thing Boris always took for granted, the one commodity he couldn't get because of his high position in the Party. And that fucking nerd was never the sentimental type, never accepted his presents. Besides he died on him, didn’t he? No second thoughts, no consequences, no Boris. He never gave a fuck.

“ _B’s gift.”_ What a joke. Time was the only gift I wanted from you, Valery, and it was the one thing you couldn’t give me.

You bastard. How could you leave me behind, how could you—

Boris tightened his fist around the key letting its metal teeth sink into his flesh. The sharp stinging brought him back to reality, back to rational thinking. Back to standing in front of a closed door.

_I didn’t leave you behind, Boris. I had no choice._

He snapped his eyes open. There it was again, anger giving way to guilt.

But there was no time for regret.

Inga was freezing. Inga was waiting. Inga was only a cat.

Valery was dead but Inga was alive.

He pushed the key into the lock and turned. With one brisk click the door creaked open into the dark apartment.

The smell of mould and dust hit his nostrils like the itch of an old wound, like a long-forgotten memory. He had never been there before yet the scent of old furniture felt eerily familiar. Maybe if he opened the shutters a stream of pale November light would rid this place of its glum otherworldly air but he didn’t want to make his presence known to people on the street.

_Another lie._

It was the thought of sunlight entering this place, this _tomb,_ that he hated the most. The specks of dust dancing in the frozen air, the ruffling of feathers coming through the open window… it was all about life. It would feel as if nothing had changed, as if life went on.

But it didn’t.

Not for Valery, not for him.

He tossed his leather gloves on the telephone desk. As he took off his ushanka hat to put it on the hanger he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror above the desk.

Was that really him? The Deputy Minister sent to Chernobyl two and a half years ago who would yell at both his superiors and his subordinates with equal fervour?

Those weren’t his eyes anymore - they were worn, tired, heavy. He had lost weight, he was missing colour from his cheeks. But it couldn’t be that bad, could it? He probably didn’t look half as bad as Valery did on the day he took his own life. Maybe Valery had gazed at this very mirror minutes before tightening the noose around his neck. Maybe he saw exactly what Boris was seeing now: a pair of vacant eyes looking back at him, filled with a million accusations, a million regrets.

_You didn’t do enough._

_All those people, all the innocent lives you sent to their graves—_

_and then the one who mattered most._

_You did nothing._

He shook the morbid thought away. He had wished a thousand times to be with Valery that fateful day, _any_ day. He had wished he wasn’t a coward.

And die for me because of a visit? he almost heard a familiar whisper in the shadows, vibrant and secure. Have me read about your death in the papers? Wouldn’t they love that, Boris. Wouldn’t they gloat over my despair. “He fell from the stairs of his own house.” “He slipped on snow.” “He mistook rat poison for salt.” “He died in his sleep because of a gas leak.” A thousand imaginative ways to die in the hands of the KGB, a thousand convenient deaths to break my heart. And what would I get? A cheap watch instead of a medal. A faceless article instead of a call from your family announcing your death to me. You would have done them a great service had you come here. And you still think you should have done it? How magnanimous of you, Boris. How gloriously naive.

(shut up you’re not here you’re not me you don’t know what it’s like--)

Boris almost collapsed, his pale forehead against the door casing being the only thing that kept him still and standing. When the voice crept back into the walls he forced his eyes open and squinted around at silhouettes of objects he still couldn’t discern.

There should be a switch somewhere, he thought, there should be some _light._ Had to be.

How he craved for it now.

He fumbled in the dark for the small plastic square on the wall like a castaway desperate for a float.

A click and there it was, the sickly light of a lightbulb giving colours and names to what were shapeless shadows a second before.

_“He said he had hidden something for you in the kitchen, ‘B’s gift’ he called it.”_

Too cryptic. But of course. He didn’t want _them_ to find out.

Boris peered through the corridor. The door at the end of it had been left half-opened revealing a kettle on the stove and a used towel hanging from a drawer under the sink. He dragged his steps across the hallway, his eyes fixed on the opposite wall, on the kettle and the cracked white tiles behind it.

Entering the kitchen he realized there was not enough light for his search – and yet he couldn’t stand another bulb hanging over his head faking daytime. He walked around the table staring numbly at the tape recorder on it and the ashtray where someone had left his final cigarette butts. Laika smokes and their familiar scent.

 _His_ scent.

Boris opened the window and blinked painfully as the hard white light engulfed him. The banging of shutters against the wall startled a couple of pigeons on the ledge causing them to flutter away.

He leaned out in the fresh air.

Valery’s apartment was on the fourth floor so he could have easily jumped from there, give his life an instant merciful ending. But it would have been messy, wouldn’t it? It would have alerted the KGB right away. Perhaps he wanted to give Gubarev time to learn about his death from neighbours and find his tapes.

Perhaps he didn’t want to make this public, his death was only meant for those who knew. Those he blamed.

Boris slammed his fists on the ledge. Squeezing his lips shut he turned back to the kitchen.

B’s gift, B’s gift, B’s gift. He should start somewhere.

He dragged the drawers open with a clang, pulled them out, emptied their contents on the floor. He pulled the dishes out of the cupboards one by one, stacking by the sink the ones that escaped his feverish haste, kicking on the side the ones that got smashed in the process. He emptied every pot, every box big enough to contain a tape. He removed the strainer from the sink and shoved a hook made out of a hanger down its depths only to bring up black pulp of rotten food and greasy strands of red hair. He folded those in a table napkin, carefully patted them dry and hid them in his pocket.

 After an hour of turning the kitchen upside down he was aching from head to toe. He wasn’t a young man anymore; he wasn’t a healthy man. He collapsed on the chair, his chest heaving as he leaned on the table, resigned, defeated.  There was not one tile on the floor he hadn’t checked, one rug he hadn’t flipped, one cookbook he hadn’t opened in hopes of finding its pages torn and replaced by something as small as a tape. He had emptied the cupboards in search of false backs. He had traced the inside of the cooker hood, the vent, but those were the first things any agent would search.

There was no hope. There was no tape addressed to him. There never was.

His hand lay lifeless on the table next to the ashtray. Unconsciously he traced the flower-shaped edge of the cool brown crystal. He fiddled with the butts and rubbed his fingers together, watching idly the ash fall on his lap. He was so lost in the deep blackness of his mind that he barely noticed the buzzing intruder flying through the open window.

The unlikely visitor landed on the back of his hand tickling his skin. Its yellow and black stripes looked so out of place on such a cold day that broke him out of his haze.

Boris lifted his hand to take a closer look at the frail lifeform.

“What are you doing here?” he mumbled, his eyes watering at the sight of a creature so fragile and beautiful. “Aren’t you supposed to be hibernating or something? Protecting your queen from the cold? Who brought you here _to die?”_

He turned his hand to get a closer look at the insect’s transparent wings.

 “You’re doomed away from your hive, you know, away from your queen. You weren’t supposed to be here at all. You were supposed to work, you were supposed to live.”

The thought of the bee’s fate made him numb.

He knew he couldn’t protect it, he could only watch it die slowly or let it go. Forget it ever existed.

He just didn’t know which was worse.

“You must be hungry,” he muttered, “but there’s no sugar in this apartment, I dropped it all in the sink. Maybe there’s —”

His last words dissolved in his drying mouth. He got up slowly like a somnambulist, mesmerized by the insect’s yellow and black stripes.

He _knew_ now.

Gubarev never said “Boris’ gift”. He said B’s gift.

 _Bee’s_ gift.

_And bees have only one gift to give._

How could he ever think it was about him. How selfish, how blind he had been all this time. It _was_ a riddle. Something the KGB would never suspect, cynical bastards that they were.

Boris placed his palm next to the sink letting the bee fly off and then frantically turned to the cupboard next to the vent. There was one jar left, one jar he hadn’t checked because it was filled with a substance so inconspicuous and dense and sticky nothing could be preserved in it without being ruined.

He opened the cupboard and grabbed the honey jar. It was big enough. It was transparent yet dense enough. No one would have guessed.

_You’re a genius, Valery. You’re a fucking genius._

He unscrewed the lid and let the honey drip into the sink.

There it was, a heat-sealed bag and a tape with a red cover in it.

There. It. _Was._

He turned on the tap and rinsed the precious find carefully making sure there were no holes on the plastic to let water in. He wiped it with the towel and ripped it open until the tape was safe and dry in his palm. With shaky hands he took it out of the case, turned to the table, pressed the eject button and shoved the tape in.

_Click._

Several seconds dragged by without a single word coming from the recorder.

_(hesitance)_

How unlike Valery. He was never afraid to speak his mind, never had second thoughts about it. But he was at a loss of words whenever Boris was being a bit too bold, whenever he took their relationship one step further. Valery would turn into a lost puppy each time Boris asked for reassurance, each time Boris showed affection. Each time Boris asked for more.

The first sound from the recording broke Boris out of his reverie.

A clearing of the throat. A cough. A sigh.

“This tape belongs to Boris Evdokimovich Shcherbina,” the voice began in an almost formal tone. “I don’t know if he will be Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers by the time it reaches him. I don’t even know if he’ll live long enough to receive it. But there it is… Months of silence condensed into a single tape.”

Boris felt his stomach clutching as the voice continued.

“The reason why I’m making this tape now, Boris, is that… you called me this morning. I knew it was you. And I knew we couldn’t talk. That’s why I’m talking now.” Valery’s recorded voice drew in a deep breath, preparing his listener for what was bound to become an unstoppable river of words.  

“I had been waiting for that call. How long has it been? Six months? A year? I’ve lost count. To be honest, I thought you’d call earlier. I would lie in bed staring at the ceiling and imagine the talks we would have you and I, hours of them, and as months went by and I didn’t get to hear from you I would come to imagine our silences instead. The ones we would share after a long tedious day at the power plant, smoking and drinking and going through endless reports without exchanging a single word. The silences that enveloped us each time we found new ways to--" A deep breath, a memory.  "Explore each other. Sometimes you couldn’t stop, sometimes I couldn’t stop. But there was always silence afterwards. I cherished that as much as I cherished watching you come undone in my arms. Losing control. I loved you the most when you were like that - vulnerable. Digging your nails into my ribs, holding on to me for dear life.”

There was a pause after that as if Valery was trying to gather his scattered thoughts.

“Forgive me, Boris, but I had forgotten how you sounded like, the deep soothing tone of your voice.  My memory…” He clicked his tongue, probably shaking his head in regret. “It must be the medication, getting heavier every week, every day. Sometimes I just refuse to take it because I don’t want to forget, you know? Least of all you. But you called.” He laughed. “I knew it was you, I heard your breathing in my ear and it all came back. The orders you gave, the barking on the phone, the promises that you’d get us… get _me_ everything I needed.” A pause. Valery giving himself time to think, to remember. “The pleas, the soft whispers when we were alone telling me what to do, guiding me in the dark, the desperate gasps and soft whimpers when you… when you… Oh God…”

Boris was almost certain he heard a stifled sob. A biting of the fist. “I’m so sorry, Boris, it all comes back to me now… It’s harder than I thought it would be. It’s _savage.”_

Another sob, masked as a sharp intake of breath. “It’s worse than being alone. It’s knowing that I’m still alive and you’re out there, in a phone booth who knows where, wasting your coins on me, unable to even say ‘hi’. Because of what I did. Because of what I said. I wish I could take it all back now...”

There was no doubt now, Valery was crying.

 _“G-_ give me one more chance to lie to the world, Boris, and I’ll take it. One horrible lie for one more day with you. I-I think it’s fair...”

Boris heard the clicking of plastic; Valery had removed his glasses and dropped them on the table. “But I couldn’t keep my mouth shut, not when I knew that they were the reason you were coughing red stains into your handkerchief. Not when I saw you broken like that, bending over your knees on that miserable bench instead of enjoying the sunlight, feeling hopeless, worthless. You’re not worthless, Borya, not to me, not to anyone. Not to the millions of people you helped save.”

Boris choked. His vision was getting blurry but he refused to dip his hand into his pocket and bring out the handkerchief – he knew Valery’s hair was still there, soft and fragile, folded in a napkin. He knew the feel of it was going to ruin him.

He wiped his cheek with the heel of his palm instead.

The voice continued. It was clearer, more composed now. “Do you remember the day when we set the lunar rover to motion for the first time? I thought I would never forgive you for making me blush in front of everyone. I mean how dare you,” Valery chuckled. “That night you made it worse - you kissed me. You made me kiss you. I didn’t know I could do that, Boris. I had forgotten. When the first rays of sunshine found us together in your bed you traced my lips promising my smile was yours to protect, forever. I didn’t understand it back then. I didn’t know why my smile mattered. And you didn’t know ‘forever’ could be awfully short.” Valery huffed. “I guess we were both equally ignorant.”

A faint laugh.

Boris winced hard against his fist as hot beads slid down the back of his hand.

“I’m smiling now, Boris, I wish you could see it,” Valery sighed happily smothering a sniffle. “You may think they won but they didn’t because not a day passes without your thought putting a smile on my face.”

Boris blinked again and again trying to get rid of the thick tears blinding him.

There was no time for grief. He had to listen to the end. He had to stay focused. He had to drink in every single word.

“They’ll never take that,” Valery reassured him, his tone steady and firm like the day in the court. “It’s that last inch of me they cannot claim. The inch that is you.”

Valery’s voice withered into a dark whisper. “They turned life into a prison, Boris. They took everything. Except you. You’re the part of me they will never have.”

The Ukrainian was leaning on his elbows, uncaring of the tear stains gathering on the tape recorder. He didn’t need it anymore. Valery’s words didn’t need a recorder to be remembered.

“Don’t die before me, Borya,” came the final choked sob from the speaker. “I could never live with myself if you did.”

Don't die before me.

The single sentence Valery uttered over their last phone call, when he decided life wasn't worth living. The one thing Boris couldn't confess to Vladimir. Their secret. How it all made sense now, Valery explaining himself, Valery bidding him farewell because he couldn't bare to see his Boris die before him.

Boris fidgeted with the keys, brushed his hand over the speaker just to feel the vibrations of Valery’s voice.

Just to _feel._

He closed his eyes waiting for the beloved friend’s last words to pulsate through his fingers as if they were together one last time, in bed, feeling each other’s lips in the dark.

The words finally came. Maybe he had heard them before. Maybe he hadn’t. He didn’t remember. It didn’t matter anymore.

Valery had lived. Valery had existed. Valery was his.

 

“I love you, Boris. Don’t die.”

 

 

…

 

That evening, and for many evenings to come, Inga enjoyed a royal meal - not just the usual canned pet food, no. She had baked salmon served in a porcelain bowl and a large basket to sleep in in front of the fireplace. However the basket was only meant for naps and she’d rather spend her day being petted and purring happily. When she was done licking herself clean she would hop on her new owner’s lap and settle herself between the pages of a Pravda issue and a hot cup of tea.

She was never denied the tenderness she deserved even if sometimes the petting was interrupted by long intakes of breath and hands stilling on her back as if time had stopped, as if the world had come to an end. She didn’t know what that meant, she was only a cat, but like all felines she knew what she wanted and she would consistently bring her owner back to reality with her soft mewing and the playful blinking of her big emerald eyes.

The gray-haired man’s lost gaze would then turn back to her, his reddened eyes softening, and he would continue to indulge her with long even strokes along her back, the ones she loved the most.

She was only a cat. Maybe she knew instinctively that her time on this planet was limited and those displays of affection, those shared moments with someone who loved her were enough to make life worth living.

Maybe she was so happy because she didn’t know how long she had.

But then again, who does.


End file.
